Hunt Down Your Credit Card Contract Online

Hey, you can now look up your credit card contract online. There’s a searchable database over at the Federal Reserve that lets you check them out in both text and PDF form.

Handy if you want to check out what you’re getting into before signing up for a new card, or if you need to debate with your credit card company over a contract point but don’t have a copy of the contract lying around.

On the other hand, after actually visiting the link, the tool is nifty. They even have my credit union in there! For all the credit union lovers out there, my credit union card charges me 1% on foreign transactions. My capital one card? Zero.

Problem is Chase has liek 30 contracts. How do you tell which one is correct?

That and onyl place you will read things liek this…

ENFORCING THIS AGREEMENT

We can delay enforcing or not enforce any of our rights under this Agreement without losing our right to enforce them in the future. If any of the terms of this Agreement are found to be unenforceable, all other terms will remain in full force.

Nifty enough in concept, but there’s no way of knowing which contract you actually got. For example, Chase Bank has 19 contracts, all dated 12-31-09. What’s more, banks that it bought up, such as WaMu, Providian, and BankOne, are not in the list at all, though millions of people would have issuing contracts from those older banks.

I wish they had this for auto, property damage, liability and homeowners’ insurance policies. Then I could Google key words, like “Tree”, “Electronics”, “Lawsuit”, etc., and get closer to knowing whether I’m really insured against various things … or not.